


i cannot say much for this monarch's sense

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Honor, Intrigue, Oaths & Vows, Pre-Relationship, The Wars of the Roses, history au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 22:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Jack had known of the lady Phryne for years, since he was the squire of Abbotsford’s grubby son learning his letters and she was the precious oldest daughter to Baron Fisher, Lord of Collingwood; all the more precious for the fact that she was one of only two daughters, and there were no sons.Jack and Phryne in the summer of 1469.





	i cannot say much for this monarch's sense

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of my palace intrigue stories. I forget who asked for this one (mea culpa...)
> 
> A note on Phryne's titles and background. Her lands are set in the south of England, around Southampton, and the concept is that she would have had a powerful stake in the wool trade - which at that time, and for several centuries afterwards, was a major source of wealth and influence. It also involved strong connections with Burgundy, which at the time this fic was set was considered a centre of beauty and culture in Europe. (Also there was a lot of money sloshing around.) Countess of Artois was a real title held by the Duchess of Burgundy at the time, but I assume she won't miss it. De la Croisière, by contrast, is not to my knowledge the real surname of any noble house. Or indeed anyone. Croisière just means "ferry", or maybe "cruise". But it looks appropriate and sounds good, so Never Mind. Meanwhile, the bit about the Stanleys is accurate. The Stanleys were exceptionally powerful and managed to be on every side in the Wars of the Roses at least once, profiting from all of them. I am not sure Aunt Prudence would really approve.
> 
> On a similar note, I have used Janet for Jane rather than Janey as Ross is a Scottish surname, and Janet was (I think) a popular Scottish diminutive of Jane.

** _I cannot say much for this Monarch's Sense_ ** _\--Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about the Wars between him and the Duke of York who was on the right side; if you do not, you had better read some other History, for I shall not be very difuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my spleen against, and show my Hatred to all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine, and not to give information. - Jane Austen, History of England_

Jack had known of the lady Phryne for years, since he was the squire of Abbotsford’s grubby son learning his letters and she was the precious oldest daughter to Baron Fisher, Lord of Collingwood; all the more precious for the fact that she was one of only two daughters, and there were no sons.

A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then, most of it bloody, and red roses and white alike had been trampled into the mud and grown from ashes, and Jack still knew very little of Lady Phryne, and understood her less. He did not know how a lady could hold a barony in her own right; he did not know why she always seemed to be where she ought not to be, and yet walk away spotless from the trim of her cloak to the hem of her houppelande. He did not know what had happened to little Jane Fisher so many years ago - for where there had been two Collingwood sisters there was now only one - or who Lady Phryne’s ward Janet Ross was, or why Lady Phryne had looked at Mistress Dorothy Williams in the stocks for supposedly cheating her master and decided that she would take the girl under her capacious wing. 

Jack had once been occupied with his own affairs, with his own small lands and manor, his own family. But he had followed his lord to war abroad, a war that was supposed to be holy and just, and found only butchery and blood: and he had returned to find his sons dead of the plague, his wife fled with her grief to a nunnery, and his home empty, his country riven with suspicion. And all he could do was take a breath, and grant Rosie her separation; and another breath, and appoint his sister’s son his heir; and another breath, and another, and another, and try to work out who, precisely, was his king.

A difficult proposition, in this cousins’ war. Jack hesitated to call himself a man of honour, an appellation that he thought was better recognised in the breach than the observance. But where was honour to be found in a land that had known slaughter at Towton? Was there honour in a royal house that usurped a throne, or that forced a queen into sanctuary? Was there honour in a royal house that locked an anointed king in the Tower and left him there to rot?

Jack kept to his lands, mislaid letters from his father-in-law demanding his support in various crackpot and probably treasonous schemes, and devoted his energies to teaching Hugh to run Abbotsford. He was a good lad. If he stayed out of politics, to which he was even less suited than Jack, he would do well. And if he married Mistress Dorothy, as he seemed more than half inclined to do - not a wonderful match, but Lady Phryne had promised her a generous dowry, and in these dark and nasty days Jack wasn’t going to stand in the way of something so untouched by grief - there would be children. 

Jack liked the idea of growing old, in peace, surrounded by great-nieces and great-nephews, and preferably without being tormented by Lady Phryne, who _would not get out of his life_.

He was a Justice of the Peace; it was his job to investigate minor mysteries, and to solve them. It certainly wasn’t the place of a great lady to get involved - and whatever else Lady Phryne was, however eccentrically she behaved, there was no doubt that she was a great lady. And yet she was always there, interesting herself in the simplest thefts or disappearances, too often unravelling them in ways he hadn’t anticipated and couldn’t have expected, and then disappearing once more: abroad, to London, to her kin by marriage in Burgundy. Who knew? 

Well, possibly Hugh knew, since Mistress Williams wrote him letters in an increasingly fair hand, but Jack wasn’t going to lower himself to ask.

He didn’t even know what Lady Phryne’s loyalties were. Her gowns were of every colour imaginable, her possessions extravagantly gilded and enamelled and engraved, her jewellery rich, and none of it ever included a badge that might be confused for a Yorkist or a Lancastrian one. When even Jack - who was of no account at all, compared to the lands and commercial interests held by the Fishers of Collingwood - was required to swear loyalties that sounded emptier with every passing year, Lady Phryne laughed and charmed to the point where everyone forgot the questions they had asked her to begin with.

Phryne, Baroness Fisher of Collingwood; Phryne de la Croisière, Countess of Artois by her marriage to a Burgundian connection of her late father’s, though what had happened to the Count of Artois Jack did not know and preferred not to speculate. The count certainly was not in evidence at Collingwood, and Lady Phryne described herself as a widow. She had spent many years abroad, and what had happened there or then was a mystery not elucidated in the slightest by the various tall tales Jack had heard. In London she made merry with whoever held power, as any courtier would; lent her favour to a Courtenay in the joust, spun couplets with Sir Anthony Woodville. But those were nothing but passing steps in a dance. They were not commitments of loyalty.

So: Burgundian by marriage. That helped little. Duchess Margaret was a daughter of the House of York, but Charles the Bold himself could be influenced by the French, whose sympathies lay with the Lancastrians. The Count of Artois, whoever he had been, had taken whatever allegiances he might have had to the grave. And though Lady Phryne might have married an ambiguous Burgundian at her father’s will, her mother’s blood was equally confusing, for the Baron’s wife had been a Stanley by birth. If there was a man alive that knew for certain where the Stanleys stood, it wasn’t Jack. Especially now that Robin of Redesdale had spread over the North, and the Earl of Warwick turned his force of arms away from the king he had made, perhaps in hope of making another more to his liking.

“He may have lost the support of Warwick,” Jack said, standing in the study that belonged to a connection of Lady Phryne’s. He was supposed to be searching it alone, but of course Lady Phryne had happened to be a guest in the house, and of course Hugh could not keep her out of the way. “But King Edward is still our anointed sovereign lord.”

“And this is still not proof,” Lady Phryne said. Her eyes were not on the letters that Jack had pulled from an incompetently hidden secret drawer, but on Jack’s face. 

“It’s suggestive.” Jack indicated the seals.

“You’d see a boy go to the headsman for something _suggestive_?”

They were standing closer together than Jack remembered intending to, and Lady Phryne’s eyes were as blue as the jewels in the carcanet around her neck. He caught his breath and wondered why; let it out again in a rush.

“He’s the same age as Hugh,” Lady Phryne pursued, and laid a hand on Jack’s arm that felt like a shock of cold water, stripping him of pretence.

“Hugh has better judgement,” Jack retorted, and gently removed Lady Phryne’s hand.

The look on her face was so strange; part thought, part disappointment, part something Jack didn’t know at all, and Jack found himself caught between something strange and warm that suffused his chest and a leaping nervousness that seemed to take hold of his heart.

He glanced over her shoulder at the fireplace. It was July: no fire in the grate.

“I beg you,” Lady Phryne said very quietly, and now the thought was sliding into only disappointment, and a kind of practised lady’s grief. “I knew his brother, at the court of Burgundy, and I promised -”

“Countess,” Jack said, very quickly, as horror jumped in his throat. “Please never beg me for _anything_.” He pressed the letters into her hands, folded her elegant fingers around them, fixed his eyes on hers instead. “Burn them. Let’s pray the boy knows enough to keep his mouth shut.” 

She went quite silent, her kingfisher-blue eyes quite round, her jaw slightly dropped, and Jack knew that for once he had shocked her instead of the other way round.

“You know,” she said slowly. “You are the only person in England who troubles to call me Countess - outside court, and I pay no mind to that. My name is Phryne.”

“You owe me nothing for this,” Jack said roughly. “It is - the right thing to do.”

Lady Phryne tucked the letters into the bodice of her houppelande, and twitched absently at the sheer veil draped over her hennin. Her eyes were still fixed on him, as if he were the most interesting thing she had ever seen.

“Nonetheless,” she said, “if I can ever assist you… I hope you will call on me, as a friend.”

Jack opened his mouth and closed it again, rooted to the spot, and there was a long tense silence that should have been awkward, but was instead charged. 

She curtseyed to him very slightly, though she owed him no such courtesy, and moved to leave the room.

“Countess,” Jack said, almost involuntarily, as if the words had escaped his mouth. “Phryne.”

She stopped. 

Jack swallowed hard. “I am at your service,” he said, and bowed.

It felt truer than any oath he’d sworn to any king, living or dead.


End file.
